Floating hospital docked in the Republic of Benin; for more information visit mercyships.org
Dana first visited our ship in 2013 during Mercy Ships’ field service in the Republic of the Congo. She will return on March 8 for four days while we’re docked in Cotonou to witness firsthand the hope and healing our crew is bringing to the people of Benin. On board theAfrica Mercy, Dana plans to shadow volunteer surgeon Dr. Mark Shrime, visit a local community, meet with patients to learn their stories, and much more.
Photo Credit: Michelle Murrey; Dana PERINO (USA), guest of Don STEPHENS, waits with a child in the Communications Room on Selection Day in Pointe Noire, Congo Photo Credit: Michelle Murrey; Dana PERINO (USA), guest of Don STEPHENS, waits with a child in the Communications Room on Selection Day in Pointe Noire, Congo africa mercy ship dock africa mercy ship port
Many people in developing nations have little or no access to healthcare, causing children, teens and adults to suffer every day from treatable medical conditions. That’s why we use a hospital ship to bring care to those directly in need. Since our founding in 1978, Mercy Ships has delivered free services impacting more than 2.5 million children and families. Dana will experience a small taste of this during her visit.
Mercy Ships is tirelessly motivated to bringing hope and healing to the world’s forgotten poor, but we cannot do so without help from people like you. Mercy Ships operates via funding from private donors, foundations and socially responsible corporations. Our entire crew — from surgeons and nurses to chefs and electricians — is made up of volunteers who pay to serve on the ship. Read the rest of this entry »
When I go to the cinema lately, I’ll admit, it does feel nostalgic, almost as if I’m doing something like they did “in the old days”– and my local cinema isn’t even a charming independent one. Should we blame it on Netflix? From our smartphones to internet-abled TV, today we have more entertainment options at our fingertips all the time, than ever before. Netflix has over 85 million members and operates in more than 190 countries worldwide. You’d like to think that cinemas will never disappear, but are you sure they really won’t?
If it did happen, at least German-born photographer Stephan Zaubitzer will have documented most of what we lost. In an ongoing archive of photographs, Stephan has been taking pictures of cinemas in city centers around the world, endlessly fascinated by their dark interiors and outlandish architecture that always stands out from their urban surroundings.
It all started in Morocco in 2003 when his flight was delayed in Burkina Faso and so he went out into the city to explore and began photographing the city’s movie theatres. The rest is history– and a lot of its fascinating old cinemas….(read more)
Bradford Richardson reports: The hacker collective Anonymous says the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is planning to launch attacks in the U.S., Paris, Indonesia, Italy and Lebanon on Sunday.
“All proof was submitted to official authorities all around the globe days ago. They have it and it is their responsibility to do something with it. But because they have not done anything with it yet and it’s almost the 22nd, we have matters into our own hands.”
OpParisIntel, the name of Anonymous’ mission against ISIS, released a statement Saturday saying it had uncovered information regarding new terror plots “on Paris and the world” scheduled for Nov. 22.
“The goal is to make sure the whole world, or at least the people going to these events, know that there have been threats and that there is possibility of an attack to happen.”
“All proof was submitted to official authorities all around the globe days ago,” the statement said, as first reported by the International Business Times. “They have it and it is their responsibility to do something with it. But because they have not done anything with it yet and it’s almost the 22nd, we have matters into our own hands.”
“We only take the responsibility of warning civilians (incase the authorities do not act well enough),” the statement added. Read the rest of this entry »
Burundi’s President Tells His Citizens to Give Up Their Guns – Or Else.
Kayla Ruble reports: After weeks of assassinations, murders, and clashes with police in Burundi, President Pierre Nkurunziza has issued an ultimatum to the country’s citizens: Give up your guns by Saturday, or else you will “be dealt with as enemies of the nation.”
“This call could be a recipe for disaster. The concern is that he’s going to use this call to try and disarm the opposition to maintain the monopoly of use of force in the country.”
Nkurunziza made the announcement in a national speech on Monday, the same day that authorities said police killed eight people during a shootout with an alleged group of criminals near the capital Bujumbura. People who turn over their weapons by the November 7 deadline will also be “trained on patriotic education.”
“Those who will not do so… will be taken as criminals and be prosecuted according to the anti-terrorism law and be dealt with as enemies of the nation. This is the last call we make.”
— President Pierre Nkurunziza
At the same time, the leader ordered Burundi’s police force to restore security in the country by December. “You are allowed to use all the necessary means and authorized rules and regulations in security matters,” he told the country’s cops.
“The successful re-election campaign sparked clashes in the streets of Bujumbura between Nkurunziza’s opponents and supporters, with violent crackdowns against demonstrators carried out by a police force that was largely loyal to the president.”
Assassins have targeted supporters of Burundi’s government, military officials, journalists, opposition members, and human rights workers since Nkurunziza won a controversial third term in office in July. Reports of dead bodies in the streets of the capital have regularly surfaced on social media, and security raids on alleged rebel groups have also occurred.
According to the United Nations, more than 200 Burundians have been killed in unrest since Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader, announced in April that he would seek a third term in office.
Critics argued the move was illegal due to the two-term limit outlined in the country’s constitution, which was established in 2005 after a decade-long civil war. The nation’s high court ultimately cleared Nkruniziza to run again, determining that it was legal because he had been appointed to his first term rather than democratically elected. Read the rest of this entry »
The Clinton Foundation and the State Department did not respond to request for comment about the email.
Alana Goodman reports: A member of Hillary Clinton’s staff at the Department of State emailed classified information about the government in Congo to a staffer at the Clinton Foundation in 2012, according to a copy of the correspondence obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, sent the email to the Clinton Foundation’s foreign policy director, Amitabh Desai, on July 12, 2012.
The message, which was originally obtained by the group Citizens United through a public records request, is partially redacted because it includes “foreign government information” that has been classified as “Confidential” by the State Department.
Although the information was not marked classified by the State Department until this past summer, intelligence sources tell the Free Beacon that it would have been classified at the time Mills sent it because “foreign government information” is considered classified from inception.
The message could add to concerns from congressional and FBI investigators about whether former Secretary Clinton and her aides mishandled classified information while at the State Department.
The email, which discussed the relationship between the governments in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, was originally drafted by Johnnie Carson, the State Department’s assistant secretary for African affairs, who sent it to Mills’ State Department email address.
Mills later forwarded the full message to Desai along with “talking points for Presient [sic] Clinton” shortly before Bill Clinton was scheduled to visit the region. Read the rest of this entry »
Alan Rappeport reports: Campaign rallies are crawling with hidden cameras these days as opposition researchers from rivals, activist groups or political action committees spare no expense in hopes of finding a gaffe or, ideally, signs of unlawfulness.
Presidential campaigns were put on notice on Tuesday that the stakes will be higher in this election cycle as Project Veritas Action, a research team that uses undercover investigators, warned that it was stepping up its stalking.
The group, which considers itself a journalism organization, is led by James O’Keefe, who has experienced his own legal problems over the years for lying to gain access to information. In 2010, Mr. O’Keefe pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges and was fined for posing as a repairman to gain access to the office of former Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Two years ago, Mr. O’Keefe paid $100,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former Acorn member after he posed as a pimp during an investigation of the activist group.
Mr. O’Keefe’s team — which he billed as an investigative SEAL Team Six — fired an opening salvo on Tuesday by calling a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington to reveal a purported violation of campaign finance laws by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s staff members.
In a five-minute video compilation, Veritas showed senior members of Mrs. Clinton’s team appearing to accept a donation from a Canadian women at Mrs. Clinton’s campaign announcement rally in exchange for hats and pins bearing the candidate’s name. The staff members — Molly Barker and Erin Tibe — express awareness that they cannot accept a donation from a foreigner but agree to allow the Canadian woman to give the money to an American citizen standing next to her who made the transaction on her behalf.
Although the American happened to be one of Project Veritas’s staff members who used a fake name, Mr. O’Keefe made the case that the video showed a willingness by the campaign to skirt laws that forbid taking donations from foreigners by using a conduit. The transaction amounted to $75, and Project Veritas has asked Mrs. Clinton’s campaign to refund the money. Read the rest of this entry »
Any way you look at it, the post-World War II era has never seen a refugee crisis on the scale of 2014
According to the U.N. Refugee Agency’s annual report, last year saw the total number of forcibly displaced persons rise to 59.5 million, an all-time high. That figure includes 38.2 million were displaced internally due to conflict, general violence, and human rights violations — also a record figure since such data began to be recorded in 1989. In 2014 alone, 13.9 million people were displaced due to conflict or persecution alone. More than half of refugees worldwide are children.
The primary driver of this nearly unprecedented level of human suffering was the civil war in Syria, now in its fifth year. For more than 30 years, Afghanistan had been the world’s largest source of refugees, but in 2014 Syria overtook it to claim the top spot. By year’s end, 7.6 million Syrians had been displaced within the country’s borders. In 2014 alone, 1.55 million Syrians fled the country, bringing the total number of Syrian refugees to 3.9 million. Today, one out of every four refugees is Syrian.
In this Jan. 31, 2014, file photo released by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), residents of the besieged Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus, Syria, queue to receive food supplies. Conditions in the camp have deteriorated since Islamic State militants muscled their way into it in early April 2015. The militants are trying to consolidate their hold on the camp. (AP Photo/UNRWA, File)
The Syrian crisis contributed to another milestone: Turkey is now home to the world’s single largest refugee population of 1.59 million. Pakistan had previously held that distinction but slipped to second place in 2014, with 1.51 refugees. The Syrian civil war has placed an enormous strain on surrounding countries, which have absorbed 95 percent of those who have fled. The war has also contributed to Europe’s foremost refugee crisis: Of the 219,000 who attempted to cross the Mediterranean, nearly half were Syrians.
Moreover, as fighting in Syria has continued and the Islamic State militant group has established a foothold there and expanded east, Iraq has seen its own refugee numbers worsen. In 2014, another 2.6 million Iraqis were displaced, bringing the total to 3.6 million.
Elsewhere in the world, the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and government forces saw just short of 230,000 Ukrainians take refuge in Russia. Renewed fighting in South Sudan displaced 1.5 million within that country. Half a million South Sudanese fled the country in 2014. Fighting in Congo displaced another million people there. With the government of Pakistan carrying out an offensive in the tribal areas against Islamist militants, some 283,500 people fled into Afghanistan.
And even as the government in Colombia carried out peace talks with the FARC rebel group to end a half-century civil war, another 137,000 Colombians were displaced, bringing the country’s total of internally displaced persons to 6 million. Read the rest of this entry »
Haifa University in Israel. Photograph: David King
Why Israel?
Claude S. Fischer writes: Why Israel?—that is, why boycott Israel and not, say, China?—has become a central question in the bitter arguments over the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The latest brawl followed the decision of the American Studies Association to endorse a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, its first and only such endorsement. The question of why Israel has arisen over boycotting Israeli scholars, Israeli companies, Israeli hummus, American companies that sell to Israel, Israeli music venues, and so on.
That Westerners of Arab, Muslim, or Jewish heritage get involved (on both sides) might be taken for granted; many have deep personal commitments. But why do so many leftish Americans and Europeans who have no personal stake in the Palestine-Israel conflict focus on it? To be clear, the question is not one of justification—whether Israeli policymakers or the boycotters and other critics have moral standing for the positions they hold. What concerns me here is explanation: Why has Israel come to occupy so much of the left’s attention?
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